Welcome home.
This is Audio EXP for the 29th of June, and the episode title is “What happened to the last podcast? “
[The following is a transcript of Audio EXP: #249]
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Ganesha Games won the RPG Publisher Spotlight this month.
In the end, I couldn’t get a response from Ganesha. However, good news, I can confirm that Andrea, the head guy there, has successfully escaped Ukraine.
Ganesha is registered in Ukraine, and was based there when the Russians invaded, but it seems like Andrea and his wife have made it back to his homeland of Italy.
The RPG Publisher Spotlight is up and it includes the long list of authors and designers who do work with Ganesha.
One of those designers is none other than Graeme Davis of Warhammer and Vampire fame, and impressively, kindly, Graeme did get in touch. Graeme explained that he did work with Andrea a little while ago and hoped to work on the Of Gods and Mortals series, but it wasn’t one of the titles the business decided to focus on.
Ganesha does publish the Tales of Blades and Heroes fantasy RPG, but it’s better known for its skirmish games like the platinum best seller Song of Blades and Heroes and the solo game Four Against Darkness.
So, what happened to the podcast last week?
The short answer is that my broadband went down. It stayed down for over four days, flickering to life for only a few minutes in the middle of the night.
My ISP, Virgin Media, pays compensation if you’re out for two solid days. I’m yet to see if I get any, and I hope the brief spurts of activity in the dead of night don’t cancel out the ‘two solid days’ requirement.
Dear engineers among you, what on Earth would cause a broadband connection to be mostly off for four days? If it was a hardware fault and a part needed to be shipped in then surely there would be no life at all.
I said that was the short version; there is a slightly longer version. On the day the internet died, I was at the 30th reunion of my school year and on the way there I encountered a parked convoy of tanks, jeeps and even motorbikes with machine guns on the streets of Edinburgh.
I can assure you that, even in an election year, even on a football weekend, we don’t usually get tanks on the street.
I made it through the tanks and through the union and was in the pub when Virgin Media texted me to say that there was a broadband problem. I thought, ‘oh well’, I’ll stay for one more pint later. Four pints later, I went home.
Fate, I think, was sure there would be no podcast on Saturday, but I was absolutely going to do it on Sunday.
There are some headlines since we last spoke worthy of making this podcast, though, and not least among them is that D&D 2024 is now on pre-order.
I’m seeing media outlets calling it D&D 5.5, One D&D and D&D 6 but I think Wizards of the Coast are officially but without confirmation calling it D&D 2024.
The question is whether D&D fans will buy it or whether they’ll stick with 5e. Another question is if D&D 2024 sells then where will it sell from? It feels unlikely people are pre-ordering it from Wizards of the Coast’s virtual tabletop as we’ve seen so little of that it feels years away. D&D Beyond, I’m sure, will get some sales in.
Meanwhile, Roll20 and the DMsGuild are doing their best to make sure you buy from them and have a D&D 2024 bundle deal. If you pre-order all three core books from then, then you’ll get the Expanded Monster Manual Roll20 module for free.
The three core books are;
- D&D 2024 Player’s Handbook, which is due September 17.
- D&D 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide, and that’s due Nov 12.
- D&D 2024 Monster Manual, which is due on Feb 18, 2025.
All dates are accurate for Roll20, that is, and isn’t it weird Wizards of the Coast are calling the core rules the 2024 release when one of the books clearly isn’t coming out in 2024.
Another weird story comes from Morrus and EN World who asks Is Evil Genius Games doubling down on NFTs & Blockchains?
As a refresher, Evil Genius have some really impressive movie licenses and the Everyday Heroes RPG system to power them. They lost the Rebel Moon license in a legal twist from Netflix and lost staff too. Some of those departing staff said it was because they didn’t like the ethics of the technical path Evil Genius was going on, and Evil Genius countered by saying they’re absolutely not going to use cryptocurrency or blockchain in their system.
It’s weird then to see Evil Genius pitching at Consensus 2024, a convention run by the cryptocurrency company Coindesk and all about web3 and where Dave Scott, the Evil Genius boss, explained how NFTs will work with their system.
In better news, I went to Game On which is the world’s largest interactive exhibition of computer games and their culture. It’s here in Edinburgh and at the National Museum of Scotland for the next few months.
At Game On, you can play retro games and some more modern ones, too. In fact, about 100 consoles are wired up to some of the first, most iconic, and culturally significant games of all time.
If you’re in Geek Native’s hometown of Edinburgh, I recommend checking out Game On.
Bronwen, who was out of the country while I suffered all my broadband woes and couldn’t sub in for me, also found some retro classics. Marvel’s Man-Thing is now a wonderfully weird model which you can pre-order from retails like Forbidden Planet.
Bronwen seems to love those dead red eyes and bulging green muscles. And who can blame her?
Another great spot is that the European Space Agency has been making LEGO bricks out of space dust.
Imagine standing on a block of 5 billion-year-old space dirt. The ESA Space Bricks are on display in some LEGO Stores worldwide.
Sticking with retro and exciting news, Bronwen’s eagle eyes gives us the heads up that MGM has commissioned an eight-episode series of The Institute. That’s a Stephen King series about kids kidnapped and trapped in a US government testing facility.
To finish up, I want to highlight a guest post by SoManyRobots, who run a successful 5e rules Patreon, and have a Kickstarter running now for Songs of the Spellbound Sea. For Geek Native, they’ve written some tips on how to run a seafaring campaign.
Lastly, in bundles, I’ve written up the Bundle of Holding and Alligator Alley’s sci-fi TTRPG deal for Esper Genesis.
On that note, may your wi-fi remain strong, and see you next week.
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